Rozz Williams, 1963-1998

Though it would make it easier for me, I wont try to glamorize his death into an art statement. Rozz Williams hanged himself in his West Hollywood apartment on April Fools Day. Best known as the founder and front man of seminal goth band Christian Death, Williams played and recorded under the names Shadow Project, the Whorses Mouth and Premature Ejaculation. His memorial Sunday night at the El Rey Theater dragged out new fans as well as old collaborators and peers.

Back when he was a not-so-sweet 16 and I was 18, Rozz and I became involved in a love affair that lasted three years. Ours was a volatile relationship that revolved around music, art and monstrous public personas. We met in a garage in Claremont, where Christian Death was rehearsing prior to its first gig. We were true punk romantics  he pierced my nipple, I tattooed his name on my wrist and slashed his palms open with a straight razor. We started a performance collaboration called Premature Ejaculation made up of noise soundtracks and recited text we wrote together; I developed a knack for self-mutilating onstage. We took acid, speed and heroin, and read and wrote together. During that time we lived on and off with Rozzs parents, and I discovered that his given name was, unsuitably, Roger Allen Painter.

From 1982 until his death, I had very little contact with Rozz. I did see him this last Christmas Eve; he had tattooed an "X" on his forehead, à la the Manson Family. I couldnt handle it because it seemed out of character  Rozzs personal style changed very little from the time I met him until this latest transformation. The last few times I saw him, I did notice that his health appeared to be poor, possibly as the result of his heavy alcohol consumption.

Wedlock: Pure love is a deathwish  our right to bleed in public contract/Essential to life/Beauty has seen the marked Beasts born to die/lead all/They follow down/Accept end-world teachings/Blood consumption nurtures censorship.

Ron and Rozz, excerpt from Premature
Ejaculation text published in NoMag, 1981

Contradictory to Rozzs isolation was the prolific rate at which he produced work in his last year. He created a multifaceted swan song and bowed out just before its release. For Triple X Records he had recorded a Shadow Project CD with his ex-wife of five years, Eva O., as well as Premature Ejaculations Wound of Exit, and The Whorses Mouth, a spoken-word collaboration with theater artist Ryan Gaumer. Close to the hour of his death, the final edit of a short film, Pig, had been completed; the film, which Rozz shot with Amsterdam-based director Nico B., is about the ambiguity of the role-playing in a killer/victim relationship.

This was the life of an artist, a true Romantic who sacrificed normality, health and happiness for the sake of vision, and a man overcome and destroyed by the demons he lived with: a tragedy. Rozz was fixated on the year 1334  the height of the Black Plague  and it seems apparent that hed planned to commit suicide on April Fools Day of his 34th year. True to form, his life was dedicated more to symbology and art than it was to life. Hes finished now, but the recordings and the disciples live on.

I can die a thousand times/but I will always be here/With the powder skull secrets/of forgotten years/The hangmans noose is drenched/with bloodstained tears/my hands are the killer that confirms/my fear.